A Brief History of Reality (as it relates to the culture wars of our times)

I’m not trained in philosophy, by any stretch, although I’ve done some reading on the topic. As well, I’m not a sociologist, nor even a close observer of contemporary culture, but I do live here and observe things.

And so I publish this blog post with the idea of starting a discussion that is looking forward to diagnosing some of the cultural difficulties that we face today, and not because I’m not suggesting I have all the answers. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I see myself as more of a journalist, a reporter (but an honest one), collecting information and passing it on, than anything else.

The study of “reality” may be found within the fields of “metaphysics” and “ontology” (with the differences between them viewed as):

Metaphysics is a very broad field, and metaphysicians attempt to answer questions about how the world is. Ontology is a related sub-field, partially within metaphysics, that answers questions of what things exist in the world. An ontology posits which entities exist in the world. So, while a metaphysics may include an implicit ontology (which means, how your theory describes the world may imply specific things in the world), they are not necessary the same field of study.

While there are many complexities within these discussions, in broad outline form, the history of “reality” has kind of followed this trajectory:

Aquinas’s “donum superadditum” vs the Alien Righteousness of Christ

Here is the heart of the issue between Protestants and Roman Catholics. For those who are following along in my series on “chain-of-being” ontology:

Starting things off: Eastern Orthodoxy: Same as all the other Eastern religions
Part 1: “Metaphysical Religion” and “Becoming One with God”
Part 2: Aquinas, “existence”, and the failure to observe the Creator-creature distinction

Here is the Creator/creature distinction in the ontological sense:

Intrinsically holy, God is qualitatively distinct from creation—not just more than, but different from, his creatures. There is no divine soul, preexisting throughout eternity, thrown mercilessly into the realm of time and matter. God breathed life into Adam in creation, and he “became a living being” (Gen 2:7 NIV)—an embodied soul and an animated body. And yet, God pronounced this creation good (Gen 1:4, 1:10, 1:12, 1:18, 1:21, 1:25, [and “very good” when speaking of man, Gen 1:31]).

It is no crime to be different from God. Finitude is not a “falling away” from some primordial infinitude. There is no part of human nature that is higher, brighter, more infinite, or more real than another. This means that the only legitimate ontological distinction is between the uncreated God and the created world, not between spiritual and material realms (as is posited in the “chain-of-being” ontology). Ontological difference – the strangeness that makes us stand in awe of God’s majesty – is good … (from Michael Horton, “The Christian Faith”, A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan © 2011, pg 42).

So yes, above and beyond the condition “to exist”, Confessional Protestantism holds this Creator/creature distinction. This distinction also exists in the ethical sense after the fall:

“Metaphysical Religion” and “Becoming One with God”

In a work that Lane Keister of Green Baggins considers to be “the best book on Roman Catholicism I have read”, Leonardo De Chirico describes what he believes to be the “core” of Roman Catholicism:

This core is a composite one and entails the ways in which the relationship between nature and grace are worked out and the Roman Catholic self-understanding of the Church which is the main subject of the system itself. The Roman Catholic system can be seen as emerging from the range of the nature-grace motifs which are allowed to coexist within it and serve to enrich it, and expressing itself in the paramount role of the church which is basically understood in Christological terms as the prolongation of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ (p. 24).

That, of course, is an over-simplified version of “what Roman Catholicism is”. At its heart, the Roman Catholic Church, hierarchy and all, considers itself to be “The Mystical Body of Christ”. You can find that idea in all the most recent Catholic literature out there.

Lumen Gentium states it this way: